The aim of this research is to grasp the real condition of the emotional labor of care workers engaged in social services, and verify how the degrees of emotional labor can affect the service quality that service providers perceive.
I analyzed tot...
The aim of this research is to grasp the real condition of the emotional labor of care workers engaged in social services, and verify how the degrees of emotional labor can affect the service quality that service providers perceive.
I analyzed total 159 care workers’ surveys distributing a questionnaire to 7 organizations performing mother-and-newborn baby care service among social voucher services in Seoul, and I used Multiple Regression Analysis to verify the research model.
Main results of this research are as follows.
First, the level of self-evaluation of workers about service quality appeared to be 3.99 on a five-point scale, and that is, worker themselves evaluated the service quality positively. From the result of the verification of cognition difference of service quality according monthly average household income factor and marital status showed a meaningful difference
Second, from the result of Multiple Regression Analysis conducted to find out the influence by emotional labor of workers on self-evaluation about service quality, ‘frequency of emotional labor’ had a positive influence on the service quality, and ‘attentiveness of emotional expression’ had a negative relations with the service quality. ‘Emotional dissonance’ had not a meaningful relations with service quality. Examining the influence of emotional labor on sub-factors of service quality, ‘frequency of emotional labor’ had a meaningful effect on reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy level, and ‘attentiveness of emotional expression’ had a negative correlation with empathy and tangibles. The factor of emotional dissonance showed no relation with sub-factors of the service quality.
Third, Examining the relations between general characteristics of care workers and sub-factors of the service quality, they evaluated by themselves that the less monthly average working days of care service was, the more reliable, and the higher the educational background was, the faster they responded (responsiveness) and the politer attitude which gave a customer and the better job performance ability they had(assurance), and the more smoothly they communicated with customers(empathy). Degree of satisfaction of the support of service providing organization had positive correlations to all the sub-factors of the service quality. That is, they evaluated that the personnel in charge accepted well their difficulties, praised well when they performed the service faithfully, and had interests in personal matters.
This research is important that I empirically analyzes the emotional labor and the service quality of social care service workers, and I suggest political and practical implications. First, in order to improve the service quality of social care service, the helpful contents for workers to get over difficulties during service-providing process should be included in the quality standard and we need to regulate whether it is conducted properly. Second, if the social care workers express their desirable emotion at the level of expressing their warmth and kindness, not causing emotional exhaustion, it is desirable in the aspect of improvement of service quality. Accordingly, it is necessary to strengthen communication skill training to express their kind attitude and inner emotion desirably and ethics of the service provider. Third, it is necessary to prepare structural condition to operate supervision system for the workers to improve service quality.